E. W. Hornung

“ And Lady Vera turned from the sly, leering, blinking, darting eyes to a pair turned hard as nails, and the harder for an oblique inner twinkle all their own.
“all right!” snapped Dollar, to her in tense relief. “I’ll take you in, Croucher, for better or worse. We’ll make it for better, if we can; but do get to your two legs, man, instead of fawning on all fours. ”

“ The same firelight, now, illumined the same steadfast look of moral and intellectual honesty. She was the same candid creature, about to tell him the whole truth about some fresh trouble, and extenuate nothing that concerned herself.
“I don’t want to waste many words on Mr. Scarth,” she began, in the least vindictive of human voices, “but I ought to tell you that I quite liked him until the other day. I met him before I met you, at a country house where he was supposed to be tutoring the boys, but was really the life and soul of the whole party. ”

“ On the Balkan battle-fields there may have been myriads of such faces, not with the unique intellectual quality of this one, but like it in their fierce contempt of battle, murder, and sudden death, as immaterial trifles not worth a qualm. Among educated Englishmen the temperament is rare, and rarer still the mental attitude; in the combination he the makings of the hell-born villain, and Mostyn Scarth was the finished article. ”

“ It’s exactly the same to me, only you may find it harder not to take one of those hands out of your trousers pockets, and the moment you show a finger I shall cripple you for life. I thought, too, that you might like to hear what we say to the police.”
“I don’t take the faintest interest in what you say to them,” returned Scarth, with a broader gleam to light his meaning.
“Good again! Do you mind going down and ringing up New Scotland Yard, Lady Vera? On your way you might please see if all three doors are shut in the room opposite; then, perhaps—no! ”

“ Over against the back windows of a nice new street of tall red houses, beyond the high red wall enclosing their common strip of shrubs and gravel, runs a humbler row of windows in connection with a mews. In one you may still catch a coachman shaving for the box, but more likely a chauffeur’s lady engrossed in her novelette; and on the next sill are pots of geraniums, while the next but one keeps the evening’s kippers nice and fresh. Most of the windows have muslin curtains, and in some the lights are on all night. ”

“ But this was not said for the worse person’s benefit; for the Vera Moyles it is impossible to speak at the worst person in the world. The point was merely urged as an argument for Dollar’s private ear. But the Mostyn Scarths are expert listeners; not a syllable was lost upon the consummate chieftain of that foul family, and he grinned gaily through the open door, where the pair now stood a little on one side.
“So you admit that you administered his coup de grace to the late lamented Sergeant Simpkins?”
“î have never denied it in my life.”
“Hear that, Croucher?” cried Scarth. ”

“ Are you free to stop as you are, or is there anything you want to settle up first?”
“There’s me rooms,” said Croucher eagerly. “There’s nothink worth fetching from ’em, but I shouldn’t like to bilk the people, ’speshly w’en ’er lidyship’s gawn an’ give me the money. Gawd bless ’er!”
Dollar precipitated the creature’s exit, on the verge of fresh saurian tears, of which there were further signs for his benefit on the mat. He might be a bad man, too, might Mr. Croucher, but he wasn’t as bad as Mostyn Scarth. ”

“ Better to finish ’em off at one fell blow, isn’t it? Not such fun for the widow or the poor innocent devil who nearly swings for him, but great work for the militant Millies and their lady leader. Splendid for you all until the truth comes out—as it will the minute a policeman shows his nose!”
It was Lady Vera who had obtained him this hearing. She had stepped up to Dollar, had taken his arm, had even put her other hand in front of her own revolver.
“Let him go on. We may as well know where we are,” she had said, in the middle of Scarth’s speech. ”

“ The worst of a Turkish bath is that your enemy may have a look at your latch-key if you will leave it in your pocket on its chain.”
The note of insolence had been forced for Croucher’s benefit, the libretto elaborated to impress that elementary mind, and it was to Croucher that Scarth turned for applause. It might have been more articulate; there was little merriment in the guttural laugh; and it was not in open mockery, if not with any visible respect, that the little red eyes sought the silent object of these insults.
Dollar met them for a moment with a sidelong flash ”

“ None of them saw that but Mostyn Scarth, and him it filled with gleaming confidence.
“come, Alfred,” said he, “get into your street clothes, if they haven’t been taken away from you! If they have, go down as you are and call a taxi. I'm going to take you out of this hole. You look more dead than alive. I thought you might; that’s one reason why I came.”
“Croucher is going to do something for me first,” said the Crime Doctor. “Then he can do what he likes.”
“Sorry you haven’t got a soul to call your own, Alfred.”
“Who says I haven’t?”
“Dr. Dollar. ”

“ He was never as bad as you thought him; you say yourself that he’s a saint compared with Mr. Scarth.” Dollar felt too savage to smile at this free version of what he had said. “Well, they have fallen out, and Croucher’s in a bad way altogether; and he has_ turned to me for a helping hand, but not for money or anything of that kind.” ”

“ He was taken, tried, condemned, and all the rest of it.”
“They always seem to forget somefink,” said Alfred Croucher, another long mile out of town.
“The first thing being that the best murders oughtn’t to look like murders,” the criminologist agreed. “They ought to look like accidents, or suicides at the most. But it takes a Mostyn Scarth to cut as deep as that.” ”

“ He had been “tret somefink crool,” he declared, but without entering into particulars, for which Dollar did not press; but on the character of Mostyn Scarth there were no such reservations. Croucher denounced that monster with the white hatred of a holy warrior, casting up his eyes with all manner of passionate and pious invocations.
“Only take me away from ’im, before it’s too late!” he implored, reluctant murder in the whites of his rolling eyes. “’E’s a bad man, a very bad man, ’e is! The ’appiest days o’ me life was wot I spent in ’ere eighteen munf ago. ”

“ Didn’t you hear him?”
“If he does, he’s a——”
“Croucher! Croucher!” said the doctor. “all I want you to do is to hand me the razor-case from the dressing-table. In fact, you needn’t do all that. Just arm yourself with the weapon you ought to find there. Then somebody will be more of a match for me. And Mr. ”